Hiram Edgar Love--so read a faded yellow card on the door-panel of Suite
10 in the "Drelincourt," an apartment hotel in a section of the city
which has ever been popular with a class that has been well termed the
"fringe of society." The name was not printed, not engraved, but written
in ancient India ink in copper-plate perfection by the careful, cleanly,
genteel Englishman that Hiram Edgar Love had been--Hiram Edgar Love,
that long since had been laid to rest in a quiet Surrey churchyard
leagues distant, though his name still did yeoman service, for it spelt
respectability; it covered a multitude of peccadilloes; his soul went
marching on! For was it not the shade of Hiram Edgar Love that had
rented the Love suite in the "Drelincourt," his shade that paid the
rent, his pipe and his slippers that lay near the fireplace for the
world to see?--Hiram Edgar Love the myth, the constantly expected but
never-coming master of the house!
Before the entrance of this suite Challoner came to a halt.
"I wonder if she's alone?" he mused, as with something like the
palpitating deference of a stranger he pressed the button underneath the
faded card and waited to learn his fate at the hands of the one woman in
all the world for him. Nor was it by any means the first time that he
had asked himself that question; all the way through the streets it had
been in his mind every moment, and so absorbed was he with the thought,
that he failed to see the familiar nod with which the diminutive god of
the "Drelincourt" lift acknowledged his advent as he proceeded to carry
upward his human freight.
"Same, sir, I suppose?" asked the boy.
Challoner made no answer; but leaving the car at the desired landing, he
had turned to the right and directed his steps to the extreme end of the
corridor.
It was a new experience to Challoner to wait among the shadows of the
dimly lighted hall; hitherto his custom had been to let himself in,
_sans_ ceremony; but the apparently successful campaign of the racing
Colonel had changed that--put him on a different footing.
"If _he's_ there," he assured himself as he pressed the button again
impatiently, "I'll know what to do, all right...."
But if Hargraves were not there! That was the contingency that sent a
chill over him. He could deal with a man--but the woman! A woman who had
never cared and who, he was only too well aware, would never even
pretend to care for him unless he had the wherewithal with which to lure
her back.
"If it were not for Hargraves--" he broke off abruptly, for the door had
opened with such unexpected suddenness that it required not a little
effort to pull himself together, and demand of the trim, little maid who
stood there:--
"Your mistress--is she at home?"
"Miss Love is not at home, sir."
Challoner was not so sure about that; in a trice he was past her, going
through room after room until he had covered the entire apartment; and
she had barely recovered from the shock that his strange behaviour had
given her than he was back again in the small, square hall, eyeing her
suspiciously.
"I want to see your mistress."
"Miss Love is not in, sir," she told him, just as if he did not already
know it.
"But you know where she went?" he asked meaningly.
"Indeed, sir, I do not," she replied, not at all disconcerted by his
manner; and her eyes as they fixed their gaze on his were as steady as
the lips that said: "She should be with her father, sir."
Challoner raged inwardly; he thought he detected a gleam of mockery in
her eyes. Once more he plunged through the apartment, seeking some
incriminating scrap of paper, some evidence that would betray his
divinity's whereabouts. But after a few minutes he was back again,
standing over the girl, menacingly.
"I want you to tell me where Letty is?" he said in a tone that told
plainly that such lies were not for him; but it had little effect on the
maid: long practice in fencing with Miss Love's admirers had made
trickery her forte.
"You might try Atlantic City, sir," she suggested blandly; "it's quite
possible that they went there."
At this, Challoner looked ugly, and seizing her roughly by the arm, he
led her to her mistress' boudoir, where, pointing to a Verne-Martin
cabinet that stood in a corner, he exclaimed:--
"Who put him there?"
For answer the girl shrugged her shoulders. She made no attempt to
disengage herself from his grasp, merely watched Challoner as his gaze
rested angrily on a plain gold frame in which was an unconventional
half-length photograph--Colonel Richard Hargraves, his arms akimbo upon
a table, his shoulders forward, his smug, full, self-satisfied face
thrust into the face of the world--of Challoner.
Even on paper Hargraves's lazy eyes seemed to insult and tantalise him,
and an insane desire to crush, batter and destroy this counterfeit
presentment came over him. For an instant he had a vague sensation of
suffocation, almost to choking, and releasing the girl, his hand sought
his throat; it encountered a scarf-pin--a trifle that his wife had given
him long ago. Tearing it quickly from his scarf, he extended it toward
the maid.
"That may fetch the truth from her," he said to himself, and aloud:
"Tell me where Letty is, and ... no"--the girl was reaching for the
jewel, but he held it from her--"no, tell me first," he added hoarsely,
toying with the pin.
"Well, then, if you must know, sir," she stammered, "she went to
Gravesend--the races, sir."
Challoner's mind received this information with a certain morbid
exultation; and thrusting his face into hers and pointing with the pin
to the portrait, he cried:--
"Then she _is_ with him?"
The girl was silent; she was figuring the value of the pin. It was worth
fifty dollars, she finally decided, and looking up at Challoner,
admitted the truth with a nod.
The pin fell into her ready grasp.
When Challoner spoke again his voice was calm and steady.
"Sit down there." He motioned to a seat and he took the one opposite.
"We'll wait until they come back--just wait."
For minutes that seemed hours they sat facing each other, Challoner
dogged but quiescent, the girl with a growing unrest upon her--a cat
with a cornered mouse.
At last a buzzer sounded.
"Stay where you are!" Challoner commanded, as the girl made a movement
to go. "If it's somebody else," he added quickly, still looking at her,
but with a changed eye, "we don't care about them; they can go away."
Again the buzzer sounded.
"Has she a key?" he whispered.
"Yes," she answered, matching his tone.
"Has he?" persisted Challoner.
The girl held up her hand for reply: the jingling of keys in the outer
hall, followed by the clink of metal in the lock, had reached their
ears; then came the closing of the door, the click of high heels, the
swish of skirts, the odour of violets, and then Letty Love, in all her
pink and white loveliness, tall, supreme, her face flushed, her lips
parted, her eyes sparkling, stood framed in the doorway. At the sight of
the man and the girl sitting there like two culprits, she burst into
laughter--a long peal of laughter that was her stock in trade, and which
ran the gamut of her deep, contralto voice. And still neither the man
nor the girl spoke, but continued to look ill at ease. To Miss Love the
situation was amusing--too amusing for words.
"Inconstant!--Naughty Lawrence!" she exclaimed, leaving his name
stranded in the air--a coquettish way she had in speaking--and pointing
her tiny gloved finger at him: "Perhaps I interrupt?" And now turning to
the girl: "Patricia, I didn't know you could be so interesting...."
The maid gasped with relief as she left the room in obedience to a
dismissing wave of her mistress' hand.
"Well, why don't the rest of you come in?" Challoner growled, fastening
his eyes on the woman.
Letty Love opened her blue eyes wide--eyes that could look the innocence
of a child or the wisdom of the ages--and feigned not to understand. And
then as if his meaning had dawned upon her, she said with a good-natured
smile:--
"Oh--why, I'm alone!"
"It's a good thing you are," he told her pointedly.